This is an old bedroom demo of mine about the passage of time and how damn inexorable it is.
Two Months Later
Every time I wake up it is two months later
I am dreaming about where I wanna be
But every time I wake up it is two months later
What on earth is happening to me
When I was younger
All those never-ending summers
Ladybirds and butterflies and bees
But now I’m older and the summer’s so much colder
Winter is just waiting there for me
Every time I wake up it is two months later
I keep on dreaming about where I wanna be
But every time I wake up it is two months later
What on earth is happening to me
We spoke in September
Then I woke up in November
I never saw you in between
But it was never my intention to keep you in suspension
Oh I think I must be living in a dream
Oh how the years fly by
April, May, June, July
I’m waiting for a time machine
Underneath the bedspread counting to a hundred
Not really knowing what it means
Every time I wake up it is two months later
I keep on dreaming about where I wanna be
But every time I wake up it is two months later
What on earth is happening to me
With songwriting, there is always that beautiful moment when you “unlock” a song. The moment when all key components are in place, and the rest pretty much writes itself.
The following phone sketch marks the unlocking of “Two Months Later”. I had the chords, the basic melodic outline, and, most crucially, a central idea (embodied in the line “Every time I wake up it is two months later”).
Allowing the rest of a song to write itself is very enjoyable. You can lie in bed for it.
I should warn that the above phone sketch contains potentially irritating breathing noises — my own potentially irritating breathing noises. I mean, what can I do? I lay my phone on the keyboard and stoop to sing into it while playing the notes (with my hands). Such an awkward posture is bound to affect me respiratorily.
I will also admit that, on occasion, I am ridiculed for my poor microphone technique. It results in Liam having to purge my vocals of sniffs and gulps in post-production. What is the cause of this poor technique? Well, perhaps it’s not my technique — perhaps it’s the minor sinus issues I have had since childhood. Or, if indeed it is a matter of technique, perhaps it’s that I’ve never sung or performed live, that I don’t actually feel like a musician, that the idea of singing into a microphone still feels alien and wrong to me, despite having recorded loads of songs and hanging out with actual musicians in a studio. Perhaps this mild case of impostor syndrome makes me breathe nasally at inopportune moments. Who the fuck knows? (Actually wait, is that impostor syndrome I’m describing? Maybe that’s something else. Who the fuck knows?)
Anyway, here is a short, stupid phone sketch recorded years back poking fun at my breathing. This is from my cusp-of-nervous-breakdown period. Many months have passed since then and I feel okay now… relatively. So even though the passage of time is a bit of an inexorable prick, it can heal, in fairness to it.